A Texan conservative Anglican -- yes, a square peg -- ponders both churchly and worldly things and enjoys his new church.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Unpleasant History the ACNA Holy Orders Task Force Left Out

I have followed Archbishop
Foley Beach’s admonition to read all of the Holy Orders Task Force report
before commenting.In full
disclosure, I skimmed a bit, but I did work through the whole thing.So now I have my Commenting License.

To me what most stands out
about the report is that it contains one long history lesson.But what stands out almost as much and
is more important is what history is neglected in the report.

Jesus taught you shall know
a tree by its fruit.A fair corollary
is that a tree will grow and produce fruit in line with its roots.By those standards, women’s
ordination, at least in the West and U. S., is problematic.

The roots of women’s
ordination in the United States for the most part implanted in mainline
denominations now wracked by apostasy.Perhaps the problem was more to do with the soil than with the roots,
but continuing… The roots of women’s ordination in the Anglican Church in North
America are, for the most part, in The Episcopal Church of the 1970’s – not the
best background.(Yes, not every
ACNA diocese that ordains women has its roots in The Episcopal Church.Hence I said “for the most part.”)In large part, WO was baggage carried
into ACNA from The Episcopal Church.

As for its fruit, women’s
ordination in the West has gone hand in hand with apostasy and preaching
“another gospel,” the social gospel.Now I grant that the argument could be made that connecting WO with
apostasy is a post hoc argument.In the Global South and in ACNA, there
are orthodox jurisdictions that ordain women.But I do have
to say that I have noticed, to my alarm, social gospel tendencies from ACNA
dioceses that ordain women.

But accurate or mistaken, there
is the perception among many Anglicans, including this one, that the fruit of
women’s ordination has been tried and wanting.The theologies of the first women bishops in the Church of
England are examples of that.The
marginalization of those who oppose or do not fully recognize women’s orders in
the Church of England (See the Philip North affair.) and in The Episcopal
Church is another.

Yet the Task Force report
barely addressed this concern about the roots and fruit of women’s ordination.
I do not know why, do not have any privy information, and do not think
speculating why would be edifying.I do know and concede that addressing the recent roots and fruit of women’s
ordination in the West is not at all easy to do in a tactful manner that does
not inflame divisions. Heck, I am
trying hard here to be polite, but it would not surprise me if this post upsets
some people.

Nonetheless, this concern
should have been fully addressed in the report.The report went through a lot of history.But unpleasant aspects of the history
of women’s ordination in the West were not sufficiently addressed.If ACNA will continue ordaining women
to the priesthood, then we should be told why that is not rooted in The
Episcopal Church of the 1970’s, or that such roots are not a besetting
problem.And we should be told why
ACNA will not go down the primrose path of apostasy and the social gospel as
have other Western jurisdictions that ordain women.Going down the path of women’s ordination while assuming it
will have entirely different results would be a dangerous assumption indeed.